Hunger Likely to Decline Worldwide — Except for Africa

The International Food Policy Research Institute recently published a report about the prospects for reducing hunger through 2020. The short version is that hunger is going to decrease in almost every region of the world, with the sole exception being Africa where the number of hungry and malnourished people continues to increase.

Worldwide, for example, the institute forecasts that the number of malnourished children will fall from 166 million in 1997 to 132 million in 2020. But in Africa, the number of malnourished children will likely increase by 50 percent to 49 million.

Why is Africa going to continue to be so worse off compared to the rest of the world? Largely because as bad as governments are in other regions of the world, the absolute worst ones are in Africa.

Kenya, for example, was food self-sufficient when it achieved independence. But decades of government corruption allowed irrigation and road systems to deteriorate. Meanwhile, even though as many as three-quarters of Kenyans are engaged in farming, Kenya allocates a mere 4 percent of its budget for agriculture, almost all of which ends up being diverted to inefficient state-run operations. The result is that even when weather is optimal and crop yields are relatively high, Kenya still must rely on international aid efforts to feed all of its people.

Kenya’s problems are repeated throughout Africa with the upshot being extremely low yields. An average acre of farmland in Europe — hardly ideal land for agriculture — yields six times as much harvested cereals as done an average acre of farmland in Africa.

The sad thing is that there is nothing on the horizon indicating that the institute’s worst case scenario won’t come to pass. Even the most liberal of African governments routinely tolerate corruption and ignore the basic needs of their citizens. Unfortunately this is the sort of obstacle that will be extremely difficult for hungry poor people on that continent to overcome.

Sources:

Big rise in hunger projected for Africa. Karl Vick, Washington Post, September 4, 2001.

Concern grows for hungry Africa. The BBC, August 28, 2001.